Tom, W8JI, wrote to me off-line about what he perceived as a
personal attack on him. Since he perceived my posting to be
an attack I will have to assume that others may share his view.
After writing this reply to Tom (included below), I decided it was
important to post this reply in order to emphasize that my taking
exception to what he has to say is in no way a personal attack
on him. It is only an attack on the misinformation that we all
continue to be bombarded with.
This sort of misinformation and deliberate distortion of the facts
is rampant -- just look at the battle with BPL (finally a reference
to RFI) where an agenda-driven group manipulates the date to
gain some financial/political advantage.
I am only cautioning Tom to be careful of his assumptions in the
area of global warming -- something that he has been rigorous
in requiring the rest of us to do when it comes to engineering
statements.
Tom's contributions to the engineering world are countless -- but
that doesn't mean that he speaks with authority in the area of
global warming.
We ALL need to be critical in what we accept as true. But I am
afraid that the topic of critical thinking is no longer taught in the
school system.
My apologies to Tom if he took my comments as a personal attack.
The text of my reply to Tom is below.
73--John W0UN
>I never expected you of all people to attack me personally in public.
>
>
>73, Tom W8JI
Tom--
I am not attacking YOU personally. Just that you pride yourself
on your engineering professionalism and yet you have fallen into
the same trap that many have. You have gone beyond your area of
expertise and you have injected your own political agenda into a
technical forum. The very sort of trap that you warn others about,
and alluded to by your comment about data taken from chat rooms.
While I also admire your excellent web site I was somewhat amazed
that you have included (at least when I last looked) a political agenda
that has no place on your web site -- assuming that you want it to be
a technical site and not a political site.
I have spent the past 29 years building instruments for atmospheric
research, and while I am certainly not one of the great scientists in the
field, I know many of them and I am a very strong believer in the
scientific method. Something that seems to be woefully lacking
in the environmental movement that is trying to quash any debate
by using the same language that you use -- "There is pretty much
universal agreement all around the world ..." This is demonstrably
untrue as the IPCC is forced to change many of their claims in the
face of the science and because many of the scientific members
have threatened to sue the IPCC to have their names removed from
this very POLITICAL document. The media only reads the "executive
summary" section that is written by politicians BEFORE the actual
technical section is written. In many cases the executive summary
is diametrically opposite of what is contained in the body of the report.
The IPCC has now totally dropped their ridiculous "hockey stick"
curve and they have revised downwards their sea level rise from
20 feet to 2 feet. All done with virtually no media coverage because
it does not fit the UN's agenda or the MEDIA's agenda. And while
Al Gore has found glacial melting, this is only true in 2% of Antarctica,
while 98% of the continent is INCREASING in snow pack. And as I
have shown in my prior posting -- there are many places where there
are receding glaciers located in close proximity to expanding glaciers
-- part of the natural life of a glacier. Of course the agenda-driven never
mention the expanding ones.
Tom, I have no argument with you, personally, only with how there is
a creeping political agenda that is not based on science in the environmental
movement. You need to apply the same critical thinking that you
do in the world of engineering to the realm of global climate change
if you are going to remain credible when you add atmospheric science
references to your engineering comments.
John W0UN
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